


Even The Stars Burn

by sixlettrsodapop



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Never Fairies, Neverland (Once Upon a Time), Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:50:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixlettrsodapop/pseuds/sixlettrsodapop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Pan, the boy with Neverland in his bones and starlight in his eyes, meets a lonely little wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even The Stars Burn

Peter knows that he’s changed Neverland; whether that’s for the good or the worse, he doesn’t know, but he’s willing to take that risk. Neverland changed to hold him, to make him survive, and he’s not going to give that up. Neverland changed him and he changed Neverland, but now they’re one; he has her dust in his bones, her starlight in his eyes, and her magic to keep him warm and that’s all he needs. Neverland’s inhabitants, the pixies and the fairies and the mermaids, the monsters under her waves and the animals in her forests, they are his family now.

Peter runs the island, twists it to suit his needs, and he is the king. He knows every shore, every tree, every plant; he jumps from tree limb to tree limb, explores every crevice and cave, learns to swim from the mermaids in the Lagoon, and doesn’t flinch when tentacles wrap around in ankles in the sea. Neverland’s magic wraps around him, falls from his fingers and swims in his eyes because he’s the king and a king need not fear his citizens.

He wears this crown with pride; it’s in the swing of his hips and the flush of his cheeks; it makes the sharp twist of his smile just that much more deadly and the fairies swoon when he visits them in their Hollow. The fairies and pixie were in Neverland before Peter; they were the first to be in Neverland and they will be the last. They made Neverland what she was before Peter came along and they should despise him, twist all his changes until he runs away, but they swoon and sparkle, landing on his shoulders and head when he visits, chattering and telling stories of what they’ve done that day. Peter may be the king of Neverland, but the fairies and pixies are her queens and he bows to them as much as they do to him.

The fairies are his closest friends and he loves them; loves their innate happiness and their delicate wings, the way they glow when they’re overjoyed and the sickly pale that happens when they’re sad. Peter is the powerful creature in Neverland, but he’d never be that without the fairies who taught him Neverland’s magic, taught him how to twist and wind it to do what he needs it to do, what he wants it to do.

The Light fairies are pale yellow and always hover on his shoulders, tiny hands gripping his ears as they whisper about the sunrise and the sunset, about the colors that bleed into the sky in their high-pitched voices. They jingle as they move and it echoes in his head, gives him a headache, but he sits down and listens to them, lets them climb all over him and poke at his eyes and chest  as they try to extinguish the darkness from his heart with the will of their own light. He laughs as they do it, nails scratching light as feathers of the birds he plays with and they frown, hands on their tiny hips, sunlight glowing wherever they land. Their leaders Lumina and Luna worry the most about him of all the fairies, wondering how the boy with darkness in his heart and twilight in his eyes can hate the sunlight when it’s the thing he needs most, but he does, preferring the clouds and the moonlight, planning most of his adventures when the moon is high in the sky and he’s pale and sunken from it.

They still play with him, flying around his head and showing him the art of what they’ve perfected. The art of making the sun rise and give life to the island, how to make it set and make the sky bleed red, orange, purple, any color he wants. He makes clouds next, to block the strongest of the sun’s beams and they twitter about him, frowns on their faces and arms crossed, jingling their protests as they dull and he laughs, running his fingers over their tiny heads and mussing their hair, murmuring reassurances that it’ll be alright.

He learns how to control Neverland’s weather from the Storm fairies, how to make it rain and thunder and lightning. Later, when people come to his home with plans to destroy what he’s created, he’ll make it rain on them with a wave of his fingers and watch from the trees that he loves, laughing quietly at their cries of outrage as they splash through puddles and mud climbs up their ankles, their calves. He’ll dance on the shores of Neverland’s beaches and spot the pirate’s ship when he longs for an enemy to play with, watching as the ship fights against the storm he’s created, the lightning lighting the sails on fire and cracking the beams, thunder rolling through the sky. When he gets bored with the pirate, he’ll visit the fairies’ home and beg to visit the other worlds’ he knows exist, clapping in glee when they finally relent.

The people in the other worlds call him Jack Frost when he visits at wintertime. He floats through the air invisibly, flipping and somersaulting, dragging fingers over their windows and watching frost crystallize over the planes. Above him, the Frost fairies are dancing, snow falling around them and catching on his eyelashes and he joins them, turning the rain to snow and filling the towns and fields with fresh  piles of it, hopping across without leaving any footprints to show him. In the mornings, he’ll hear them whispering as they put on their coats, saying that Jack Frost visited overnight and he’ll preen, crowing to the skies as the snow starts again. He’ll dance through the air to the town’s lake and freeze it over with a touch, the fairies gliding on the ice with natural precision and talent, Peter joining them and skipping around the townspeople who are rushing to the ice. Besides the feral Animal Fairies who dart through the underbrush, the Frost Fairies are the cruelest, laughing in high tinkling voices when the ice cracks the people fall through, only helping Peter fetch out the children and joining in his laughter when the adults flail under the water. They slide under the adults’ feet when they do manage to climb on the banks of the lake, cackling in glee when they slip and land in the snow, red and shivering.

Peter doesn’t bring snow back to Neverland; he likes it, likes watching the kids run through it and enjoy it, but he likes Neverland warm, likes watching the plants flourish. Before Peter, the plants of Neverland were lovely and nice, never threatening anything that lived on the island and the Flower Fairies tended to each plant, making it bloom bigger and brighter than any of its kind before. Until the storm that is Peter Pan came, crashing into Neverland with the fierceness of a tiger and the poison in his veins of a snake. With his charming words and kind voice, the tiny fairies listened as he weaved a tale of flowers that grew from his blood. Beautiful, midnight blue blossoms so much like the twilight that twinkled in his eyes with spiraling, poisonous vines that climbed cave walls and tree trunks alike that looked harmless until touched; poison that made its’ victims spiderweb black and blue and made Peter more powerful, but oh, how these delicate fairies hung on to his every word, enchanted by his games that only he could win.

They made the Dreamshade from Peter’s blood and poison, from his stories, but only made it harmful to humans, to keep the creatures of Neverland safe because for how much they loved Peter and his games, they loved the animals and creatures more. They were close with the Animal Fairies, dark purple hair contrasting with the bubblegum pink of the Animal Fairies as they worked to make the island the best place for the animals and creatures, safe as they could with Peter running around. Peter, who laughs softly and makes the Animal Fairies huff as they try to teach him how to identify the different tracks of the animals on Neverland, teach him how to follow and track the animals; he learns how to spot traces of blood on the ground and the brush in the forest so he can track an injured animal and the fairies teach him healing magic to reset broken legs and patch up wounds. He smiles through it all, but his eyes are dark as he listens to them, absorbing all that they say.

The Animal Fairies, with their pink hair and blue eyes, are the sweetest looking of all the fairies, but they smile and their teeth are sharp like the predators they fawn over and they growl at passerbys, their tiny fingers ending with claws that they press into Peter’s arms until blood drips. They smile at him and he smiles back, his teeth reshaping themselves to sharp-but-dull edges like the fairies he loves as much as he can and they show him how to make the animals of Neverland trust him, how to dull his magic when he’s with them because it clouds their senses and puts them on edge, how to move slowly but surely towards the animals until they let him touch them because even though he’s made of Neverland, he can still feel pain and bleed.

Peter is playing a set of pipes, the fairies twittering about his head as he does, high twinkling voices singing a song of Neverland and her beauty, of her danger and how she defends herself against her enemies. The fire he built rises as he plays, dying as the song does and he laughs, falling onto the ground heavily and tossing his pipes aside. The fairies pile on, picking and pulling as they settle onto him and he stretches, the fairies frowning as they tumble off; he wrinkles his nose at them and the leaves closest to him rustle. The fairies scatter, tinkling complaints of the Animal Fairies as they tumble from the underbrush and dust themselves off, digging sharp claws into Peter’s hand and tugging until the boy gets up. He follows them silently on light feet, the tracks of a wolf underfoot and he stops at the edge of a clearing, sounds caught in his throat as he stares at the wolf.

It’s bigger than any wolves he’s seen on Neverland, pale gold with sharp blue eyes and it’s staring into the forest, whining low in its throat and Peter aches to go to it. It’s alone and there’s something wrong with it, something missing and Peter wants to make it better; the fairies are standing on the branch above his head, wringing their hands together and speaking too fast for Peter to catch much more than a few words telling him to go to the wolf, to fix it.

He steps from his hiding place and the wolf stiffens, a growl rumbling from it and it’s like the thunder that Peter plays with, strong and sudden and a thrill runs through his stomach as he stops. The wolf watches him, wary and paces back and forth, tail tucked between its legs and Peter pushes away his magic as he edges closer. He stops when the growl grows louder and waits, hands held in front of him low and he drops his eyes and the wolf stops pacing, nails pulling up the dirt beneath its feet. The wolf watches him before it whines and Peter drops to his knees, folding his hands in his lap and waits. He slowly crawls forward until he can sit half a foot away, stretching his legs out and leaning back on his hands; the wolf watches him from the corner of its eye and he ignores it, looks up at the trees and the wavering moonlight filtering through the leaves.

He hums and waits until he gets a crick in his neck and then he sits up, hugging his knees to his chest and resting his chin on them until the sun bleeds pink on the horizon and the wolf changes, golden fur becoming pale skin and long legs, long torso, long arms until there’s a boy with pale blonde, tangled hair and cold blue eyes staring at him. The boy pulls a stack of clothes from a hollow under a tree and pulls them on slowly before he mimics Peter’s position, never letting the other boy from his sight and Peter holds still as he can. The fairies are hovering around him, sharp teeth digging into their lips and two of the land on Peter’s head, nestling into his hair and he breathes out as the boy’s shoulders relax.

“Do you want to come home with me?” Peter whispers, not wanting to scare the boy off; he’s long and Peter knows he’ll be taller than he is, but he’s folded so much into himself, so _small_ that Peter just wants to give him a home where he’ll be safe.

The boy still hasn’t looked away from Peter and Peter would say he’s not blinked either except he knows that’s not possible and then he nods, just the smallest movement of his head, just enough for Peter to know he’s accepted the invitation and Peter smiles, a smile not twisted at the edges for the first time in years and stands up, jostling the fairies from their nest in his hair. Peter may have Neverland in his bones, but this boy has wildness in his and together, they could destroy the world if they wanted and Peter likes the thought of that.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [Caitlin](walkonthrougharedparade.tumblr.com/), who both created wolf!Felix and let me write off her headcanon posts about him.
> 
> For questions, feel free to ask me on [Tumblr](peterpanneverfails.tumblr.com).


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